Excerpts from the works of William F. Buckley Jr., who...

February 28, 2008

Excerpts from the works of William F. Buckley Jr., who died Wednesday at age 82: "I was in a radio exchange with the senior U.S. liberal, Professor Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who in a casual survey of technology stunned me by saying that, in his judgment, 'word processing is the greatest invention in modern history.' Suddenly I was face to face with the flip side of Paradise. That means, doesn't it, that Professor Schlesinger will write more than he would do otherwise?"-- from "The Dictionary, Ready at Hand," an essay about computers. -- -- -- "I arrived in Switzerland with only a single idea in mind. And that idea was to commit literary iconoclasm. I would write a book in which the good guys and the bad guys were actually distinguishable from one another. I took a deep breath and further resolved that the good guys would be -- the Americans."-- on the origins of his Blackford Oakes spy novels.